Showing results 913 - 924 of 961 for the category: British Museum.

July 29, 2003

British Museum rejects calls for Rosetta Stone return

Posted at 9:42 am in British Museum, Similar cases

The British Museum has stated that they will not consider any return of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt, whether permanently, or in the form of a loan.

From:
Mail & Guardian

Tuesday, July 29, 2003
The Rosetta Stone will stay in London, and that’s final
Cairo
29 July 2003 10:34

Egypt’s antiquities chief will continue to press the British Museum to loan the 2 200-year-old Rosetta Stone to Cairo for a limited time, though British curators say they can’t let a piece central to their collection go.

“The trustees do not consent to the loan of what might be called “iconic” objects …. To loan such pieces would result in our disappointing the five-million or so visitors who come to the museum every year,” British Museum officials said in a statement issued on Monday in London.
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Differences in attitudes to artefact repatriation

Posted at 9:25 am in British Museum, Similar cases

Museums in the USA were founded on very different principles to many of those in Europe. Nowadays, this difference is starting to manifest itself in their more pragmatic approach to the restitution of disputed artefacts in their collections.

From:
Slate

Trading Places
Cultural property disputes are reshaping the art world—but how?
By Carol Kino
Posted Monday, July 28, 2003, at 12:25 PM PT

It’s a sad truth that the depredations of war and imperialism have sometimes had positive side effects for art history. Take the Metropolitan Museum’s recent “Manet-Velázquez” show, on the influence of 17th-century Spanish painting on 19th-century French art. For most of the 18th century, Spanish artists like Murillo, Zurbaran, and Velázquez were little known outside their homeland. Then in the early 1800s, hundreds of Spanish paintings arrived in Paris as Napoleonic war loot. Some were briefly shown at the Louvre before Napoleon’s defeat, after which they were returned. Later that century, French artists began adopting the Spanish artists’ realist aesthetic and loose, sensuous brushwork—a move that laid the foundations of Impressionism and radically changed the course of modern art.

Unlike many European museums, American museums were built with civic and capitalist muscle, rather than imperial might. Yet well into the 1970s their attitude toward acquisitions—as any expert will admit off the record—was frequently “don’t ask, don’t tell.” But today American courts are dealing with an unprecedented number of Holocaust reparation cases. And last year, the Justice Department successfully prosecuted a well-known New York dealer, Frederick Schultz, for conspiring to receive stolen Egyptian antiquities. As a result, some foreign collectors and museums have become more cautious about loaning work to museum shows—particularly those in America—and everyone has become vastly more diligent about conducting provenance research before buying.
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July 25, 2003

Egypt calls for British Museum to return Rosetta Stone

Posted at 9:30 am in British Museum, Similar cases

Egypt’s Zahi Hawass has requested that the British Museum returns the Rosetta Stone.

From:
BBC News

Last Updated: Monday, 21 July, 2003, 14:00 GMT 15:00 UK
Egypt calls for return of Rosetta Stone

Egyptian authorities are calling for the British Museum to return the 2,000-year-old Rosetta Stone to Cairo.

The artefact is one of the British Museum’s most prize pieces, helping to attract millions of visitors each year.
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June 17, 2003

Could a joint venture between UK & Greece solve the Elgin Marbles problem?

Posted at 8:19 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum

A possible resolution to the dispute over the Elgin Marbles has been proposed, whereby Greece would operate the New Acropolis Museum as an annexe of the British Museum, allowing the London institution to retain ownership & control of the sculptures, while they would be on public display in Greece.

From:
Greece Now

Joint venture could solve Marbles deadlock
Greece offers annex of new Acropolis Museum to the British Museum to host exhibition

Greece has offered to host a joint-exhibition of the Parthenon Marbles (known in the UK as the Elgin Marbles) with the British Museum in a bid to end the tug of war over the sculptures in time for the Athens 2004 Olympics.

The Greek Culture Minister Evangelos Venizelos offered an annex of the planned Acropolis museum, being built in time for the Games, to revive stalled talks over the ancient Greek sculptures.
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June 13, 2003

Will the New Acropolis Museum herald the return of the Parthenon Sculptures?

Posted at 1:01 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

The New Acropolis Museum represents a momentous turning point in the story of the Elgin Marbles – and perhaps the most persuasive argument for their return, to emerge in recent years.

From:
Financial Times

Friday Jun 13 2003
Sharp end of civilisation
By Peter Aspden

They arrived in London in 1811, cracked and battered, but, like an asylum seeker with suspect credentials, they had to wait for another five years before they found a new home, in a brick-built shed in Bloomsbury.

Within months, they became one of the city’s most compelling attractions. One admirer, the painter Benjamin Haydon, wrote with amazement that 1,200 people had visited them in a single day. He liked to record conversations in his diary: “We overheard two common-looking decent men say to each other, ‘How broken they are, a’ant they?’ ‘Yes,’ said the other, ‘but how like life’.”
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June 7, 2003

British Museum celebrates 250th anniversary

Posted at 1:10 pm in British Museum

The British Museum is 250 years old. In the time since it opened, a lot has changed – the means of acquiring artefacts, which were once acceptable, are no longer seen in the same light.

Perhaps now, in celebration of this anniversary, the time is right for the British Museum to re-invent itself, but repatriating the disputed artefacts in its collection, by negotiating new deals & exchanges, by looking forward rather than backward.

From:
Guardian

National treasure
In praise of the British Museum
Leader
Saturday June 7, 2003
The Guardian

This nation has too few monuments to the mind. Quite the grandest can be found in the capital – the British Museum, which is 250 years old today. A project of the 18th-century English enlightenment, it offered an education to the masses at a time when the country’s monarch, and much of its ruling classes, were indifferent to the public’s need for scholarly nourishment. It took an act of parliament to set up, was paid for by a public lottery and was founded in Bloomsbury in 1753 where it still stands. The first national public museum in the world opened for “all studious and curious persons” two years later. Dickens, Marx and Orwell all passed through its neo-classical portals in the pursuit of knowledge.

The British Museum made its name by collecting and cataloguing the world. It has sensibly abjured the trend for many public places to be an arm of the entertainment industry. This can be deeply unfashionable, but there is a place for it – highlighted by the need to repair Iraq’s cultural heritage, a task which the British Museum’s curators and conservators are uniquely equipped to help. Of course one person’s accumulated wealth can be viewed as another’s loss. Plunder may have brought the Elgin Marbles to Britain, but it is undeniable that they remain free for anyone to see. These arguments should be put to one side today. The British Museum’s repository of knowledge instead should be celebrated.
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May 26, 2003

Is a left arm in the British Museum from the Elgin Marbles in fact a right arm?

Posted at 4:58 pm in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

The British Museum claims to be the best place for looking after the Parthenon Marbles, but new claims suggest, that for the entire time it has been in their collection, they have labeled a piece as a left arm from the sculptures, when it is in fact a right arm. Whether or not this is the case has yet to be determined.

From:
Guardian

Artist says British Museum does not know left from right
Maev Kennedy, arts and heritage correspondent
Monday May 26, 2003

There are several ways of looking at the troubled history of the Parthenon marbles. The argument now is over whether the British Museum knows its elbow from its armpit.

As international controversy rumbles on over future of the marbles, the new bones of contention are in a shattered fragment of a 2,441-year-old arm.
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Should Britain return Australian Aboriginal remains

Posted at 4:54 pm in British Museum, Similar cases

The return of aboriginal remains is a debate that has been ongoing for some time. The government has commissioned a legal report, due to be completed next month, that is expected to be sympathetic to the issue. Many scientists are very upset at the idea that museums may have to return any of these remains however.

From:
The Age (Melbourne)

Science versus sanctity
May 26 2003

Britain is considering whether to return ancient Aboriginal remains to Australia, and UK scientists are up in arms. Peter Fray reports.

Playing the reluctant scientist, Chris Stringer would have you believe he was “pushed”. But the reality is, he jumped, feet first, into one of the hottest scientific and cultural debates on the planet: who owns ancient remains? Is it the world’s museums or the descendants of traditional societies?
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April 27, 2003

Looking back at the looting of Baghdad

Posted at 7:44 am in British Museum, Similar cases

Four articles look at different aspects of the looting of museums & archaeological sites in Iraq, whether similar things could happen in the west, & whether more steps could have been taken to anticipate it.

The British Museum has been eager to help the situation – which is to be welcomed, but at the same time is slightly odd behaviour, as so many of the museum’s own artefacts were acquired through similar situation in the past. Despite this fact though, they continue to maintain that what happened in the past was perfectly acceptable, but that what is happening now in Iraq is to be condemned.

From:
Post Gazette

Looting of Baghdad treasures shines light on a ‘dirty business’
Sunday, April 27, 2003
By Dennis B. Roddy, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

The Byzantine frescos of Lysi, painted in Cyprus, kidnapped to Germany and now staring down from the ceiling of a museum chapel in Texas, testify by their travels that the world views much of its cultural legacy through a catalog of stolen property.

For nine centuries, the frescos hung unmolested on a small chapel in Cyprus before being cut from the ceiling by Turkish looters during the 1974 war. Ten years later, a Houston foundation, working with the Cypriot Orthodox Church, saved them and installed them in the museum chapel, where they are an example of the moral ambiguity of the antiquities trade.
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April 10, 2003

Will the New Acropolis Museum’s centerpiece be there for its opening?

Posted at 7:58 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles, New Acropolis Museum

The New Acropolis Museum is designed specifically to house the Parthenon Marbles. At present though, these sculptures are split between London & Athens, with no resolution in sight.

From:
CNN

Elgin Marbles: Centerpiece of new museum?
Greece preparing arts for 2004 Olympics
Thursday, April 10, 2003 Posted: 1:01 PM EDT (1701 GMT)

NEW YORK (AP) — The halves of a carving depicting an ancient Greek chariot race interlock on the gallery wall like parts of a jigsaw puzzle.

“Both pieces, currently divided between Athens and London, should be rejoined at the New Acropolis Museum,” says the caption.
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March 21, 2003

Neil MacGregor answers questions about the Parthenon Marbles

Posted at 8:18 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

British Museum director, Neil MacGregor, is interviewed about the Parthenon Marbles. Unfortunately, his views on the subject are no more forward looking than those of his predecessor.

From:
Art & Antiques

Culture Clash

LONDON — The Elgin Marbles, an ensemble of friezes and sculptures taken from the Parthenon by a British nobleman, have been displayed in the British Museum since 1816. Museum Director Neil MacGregor took office in August and now stands at the center of the world’s most enduring conflict over cultural heritage. In a Q&A with Art & Antiques, MacGregor talks about Greece’s demands that the marbles be returned in time for the 2004 Olympics. He also touches on the venerable institution’s fiscal crisis.

A&A
About 40 percent of the Elgin Marbles are in Athens, 50 percent are here, and the rest are scattered around museums all over Europe. You’re an art historian. Wouldn’t it be nice to have them all in one place? Don’t the Greeks have a point on that?

NM
Of course they have a point, but half the marbles are lost forever. We’re talking about the proportions of what remains. They can’t get them up onto the Parthenon because it’s a ruin, so the argument that one normally makes for gathering things together from the same ensemble, that you are restoring or recovering the work of art, doesn’t apply here. One’s got to recognize that their life as part of the Parthenon is over. It seems to me rather a fortunate accident of history that about half of what survived is in London.
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March 1, 2003

Why Neil MacGregor thinks the Parthenon Marbles will never return to Greece

Posted at 8:02 am in British Museum, Elgin Marbles

More coverage of Neil MacGregor’s statement that the Parthenon Marbles will never return to Athens.

From:
Kathimerini (English Edition)

Monday February 24, 2003
Museum severs Marbles talks

LONDON (AP) – The British Museum’s Elgin Collection of sculptures from the Parthenon should never be returned to their original home in Greece, the museum’s director was quoted as saying yesterday.

“I do not believe there is a case for returning the marbles,” Museum Director Neil MacGregor said, according to the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. “They have a purpose here because this is where they can do most good… The British Museum can situate the achievements of these Greek sculptures in the context of the wider ancient world.”
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